nd
England on the basis of homicides reported to the police, the outcome
of such a comparison will be to show that there are annually more than
twice as many murders committed per one hundred thousand inhabitants
over the age of ten in England than there are in India.

An objection may be taken to these figures on the ground that the
crime of infanticide is much more prevalent to India than it is in
England, and that the perpetrators of this crime are much less
frequently brought to justice in the former country than with us. That
objection is to some extent valid; at the same time it is well to
remember that infanticide in India is an offence of a very special and
peculiar character; the motives from which it springs are not what is
usually understood as criminal; these motives arise from religious
usage and immemorial custom; in short, it is English law and not the
Indian conscience which makes infanticide a crime. Of course, the
practice of infanticide is a proof that the Hindu mind has not the
same high conception of the value of infant life as one finds in the
western world, and in that respect India stands on an inferior moral
level to ourselves. But with the exception of infanticide (and it is
necessary to except it for the reasons I have just alleged) India has
not half as many homicides annually as England.[17]

[17] For the high percentage of infanticide in England see the
evidence given before the House of Lords last July (1890) by
Judges Day and Wills.

To what cause is this vast difference in favour of India to be
attributed? It is hardly probable that the difference is produced to
any appreciable extent, if at all, by the nature of the food used by
the people of India. If it were correct that a vegetable diet, such as
is almost exclusively used by the inhabitants of India, had a salutary
effect on the conduct of the population, we should witness the results
of it, not only in the Indian peninsula, but also in other quarters of
the world. The nature of the food consumed by the Italians bears a
very close resemblance in its essential constituents to the dietary of
the inhabitants of India; in both cases it is almost entirely composed
of vegetable products. If vegetable, as contrasted with animal food,
exercised a beneficial influence on human conduct; if it tended, for
example, to restrain the passions, to minimise the brute instincts,
some indisputable proof of this would be certain to show i